Notes on Life and Letters, by Joseph Conrad

Part I— Letters

Books — 1905.

1.

“I have not read this author’s books, and if I have read them I have forgotten what they were
about.”

These words are reported as having been uttered in our midst not a hundred years ago, publicly, from the seat of
justice, by a civic magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers have a solemnity and importance far above the words
of other mortals, because our municipal rulers more than any other variety of our governors and masters represent the
average wisdom, temperament, sense and virtue of the community. This generalisation, it ought to be promptly said in
the interests of eternal justice (and recent friendship), does not apply to the United States of America. There, if one
may believe the long and helpless indignations of their daily and weekly Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear
to be thieves of a particularly irrepressible sort. But this by the way. My concern is with a statement issuing from
the average temperament and the average wisdom of a great and wealthy community, and uttered by a civic magistrate
obviously without fear and without reproach.

I confess I am pleased with his temper, which is that of prudence. “I have not read the books,” he says, and
immediately he adds, “and if I have read them I have forgotten.” This is excellent caution. And I like his style: it is
unartificial and bears the stamp of manly sincerity. As a reported piece of prose this declaration is easy to read and
not difficult to believe. Many books have not been read; still more have been forgotten. As a piece of civic oratory
this declaration is strikingly effective. Calculated to fall in with the bent of the popular mind, so familiar with all
forms of forgetfulness, it has also the power to stir up a subtle emotion while it starts a train of thought — and what
greater force can be expected from human speech? But it is in naturalness that this declaration is perfectly
delightful, for there is nothing more natural than for a grave City Father to forget what the books he has read once —
long ago — in his giddy youth maybe — were about.

And the books in question are novels, or, at any rate, were written as novels. I proceed thus cautiously (following
my illustrious example) because being without fear and desiring to remain as far as possible without reproach, I
confess at once that I have not read them.

I have not; and of the million persons or more who are said to have read them, I never met one yet with the talent
of lucid exposition sufficiently developed to give me a connected account of what they are about. But they are books,
part and parcel of humanity, and as such, in their ever increasing, jostling multitude, they are worthy of regard,
admiration, and compassion.

Especially of compassion. It has been said a long time ago that books have their fate. They have, and it is very
much like the destiny of man. They share with us the great incertitude of ignominy or glory — of severe justice and
senseless persecution — of calumny and misunderstanding — the shame of undeserved success. Of all the inanimate
objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thought, our ambitions, our
indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. But most of all they
resemble us in their precarious hold on life. A bridge constructed according to the rules of the art of bridge-building
is certain of a long, honourable and useful career. But a book as good in its way as the bridge may perish obscurely on
the very day of its birth. The art of their creators is not sufficient to give them more than a moment of life. Of the
books born from the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity of human minds, those that the Muses would love best
lie more than all others under the menace of an early death. Sometimes their defects will save them. Sometimes a book
fair to see may — to use a lofty expression — have no individual soul. Obviously a book of that sort cannot die. It can
only crumble into dust. But the best of books drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the
brink of destruction, for men’s memories are short, and their sympathy is, we must admit, a very fluctuating,
unprincipled emotion.

No secret of eternal life for our books can be found amongst the formulas of art, any more than for our bodies in a
prescribed combination of drugs. This is not because some books are not worthy of enduring life, but because the
formulas of art are dependent on things variable, unstable and untrustworthy; on human sympathies, on prejudices, on
likes and dislikes, on the sense of virtue and the sense of propriety, on beliefs and theories that, indestructible in
themselves, always change their form — often in the lifetime of one fleeting generation.

2

Of all books, novels, which the Muses should love, make a serious claim on our compassion. The art
of the novelist is simple. At the same time it is the most elusive of all creative arts, the most liable to be obscured
by the scruples of its servants and votaries, the one pre-eminently destined to bring trouble to the mind and the heart
of the artist. After all, the creation of a world is not a small undertaking except perhaps to the divinely gifted. In
truth every novelist must begin by creating for himself a world, great or little, in which he can honestly believe.
This world cannot be made otherwise than in his own image: it is fated to remain individual and a little mysterious,
and yet it must resemble something already familiar to the experience, the thoughts and the sensations of his readers.
At the heart of fiction, even the least worthy of the name, some sort of truth can be found — if only the truth of a
childish theatrical ardour in the game of life, as in the novels of Dumas the father. But the fair truth of human
delicacy can be found in Mr. Henry James’s novels; and the comical, appalling truth of human rapacity let loose amongst
the spoils of existence lives in the monstrous world created by Balzac. The pursuit of happiness by means lawful and
unlawful, through resignation or revolt, by the clever manipulation of conventions or by solemn hanging on to the
skirts of the latest scientific theory, is the only theme that can be legitimately developed by the novelist who is the
chronicler of the adventures of mankind amongst the dangers of the kingdom of the earth. And the kingdom of this earth
itself, the ground upon which his individualities stand, stumble, or die, must enter into his scheme of faithful
record. To encompass all this in one harmonious conception is a great feat; and even to attempt it deliberately with
serious intention, not from the senseless prompting of an ignorant heart, is an honourable ambition. For it requires
some courage to step in calmly where fools may be eager to rush. As a distinguished and successful French novelist once
observed of fiction, “C’est un art trop difficile.”

It is natural that the novelist should doubt his ability to cope with his task. He imagines it more gigantic than it
is. And yet literary creation being only one of the legitimate forms of human activity has no value but on the
condition of not excluding the fullest recognition of all the more distinct forms of action. This condition is
sometimes forgotten by the man of letters, who often, especially in his youth, is inclined to lay a claim of exclusive
superiority for his own amongst all the other tasks of the human mind. The mass of verse and prose may glimmer here and
there with the glow of a divine spark, but in the sum of human effort it has no special importance. There is no
justificative formula for its existence any more than for any other artistic achievement. With the rest of them it is
destined to be forgotten, without, perhaps, leaving the faintest trace. Where a novelist has an advantage over the
workers in other fields of thought is in his privilege of freedom — the freedom of expression and the freedom of
confessing his innermost beliefs — which should console him for the hard slavery of the pen.

3.

Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to
discover the fettering dogmas of some romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the free work of its own
inspiration, is a trick worthy of human perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a
pedigree of distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of inferior minds when it is not the cunning device of those who,
uncertain of their talent, would seek to add lustre to it by the authority of a school. Such, for instance, are the
high priests who have proclaimed Stendhal for a prophet of Naturalism. But Stendhal himself would have accepted no
limitation of his freedom. Stendhal’s mind was of the first order. His spirit above must be raging with a peculiarly
Stendhalesque scorn and indignation. For the truth is that more than one kind of intellectual cowardice hides behind
the literary formulas. And Stendhal was pre-eminently courageous. He wrote his two great novels, which so few people
have read, in a spirit of fearless liberty.

It must not be supposed that I claim for the artist in fiction the freedom of moral Nihilism. I would require from
him many acts of faith of which the first would be the cherishing of an undying hope; and hope, it will not be
contested, implies all the piety of effort and renunciation. It is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force and
inspiration belonging to the life of this earth. We are inclined to forget that the way of excellence is in the
intellectual, as distinguished from emotional, humility. What one feels so hopelessly barren in declared pessimism is
just its arrogance. It seems as if the discovery made by many men at various times that there is much evil in the world
were a source of proud and unholy joy unto some of the modern writers. That frame of mind is not the proper one in
which to approach seriously the art of fiction. It gives an author — goodness only knows why — an elated sense of his
own superiority. And there is nothing more dangerous than such an elation to that absolute loyalty towards his feelings
and sensations an author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation.

To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that
there is no impossibility of its being made so. If the flight of imaginative thought may be allowed to rise superior to
many moralities current amongst mankind, a novelist who would think himself of a superior essence to other men would
miss the first condition of his calling. To have the gift of words is no such great matter. A man furnished with a
long-range weapon does not become a hunter or a warrior by the mere possession of a fire-arm; many other qualities of
character and temperament are necessary to make him either one or the other. Of him from whose armoury of phrases one
in a hundred thousand may perhaps hit the far-distant and elusive mark of art I would ask that in his dealings with
mankind he should be capable of giving a tender recognition to their obscure virtues. I would not have him impatient
with their small failings and scornful of their errors. I would not have him expect too much gratitude from that
humanity whose fate, as illustrated in individuals, it is open to him to depict as ridiculous or terrible. I would wish
him to look with a large forgiveness at men’s ideas and prejudices, which are by no means the outcome of malevolence,
but depend on their education, their social status, even their professions. The good artist should expect no
recognition of his toil and no admiration of his genius, because his toil can with difficulty be appraised and his
genius cannot possibly mean anything to the illiterate who, even from the dreadful wisdom of their evoked dead, have,
so far, culled nothing but inanities and platitudes. I would wish him to enlarge his sympathies by patient and loving
observation while he grows in mental power. It is in the impartial practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of
perfection for his art can be found, rather than in the absurd formulas trying to prescribe this or that particular
method of technique or conception. Let him mature the strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth,
which it is his business to cherish and know, and refrain from calling down his inspiration ready-made from some heaven
of perfections of which he knows nothing. And I would not grudge him the proud illusion that will come sometimes to a
writer: the illusion that his achievement has almost equalled the greatness of his dream. For what else could give him
the serenity and the force to hug to his breast as a thing delightful and human, the virtue, the rectitude and sagacity
of his own City, declaring with simple eloquence through the mouth of a Conscript Father: “I have not read this
author’s books, and if I have read them I have forgotten . . . ”